Or providing assistance in any form for an organization actively engaging in the above activities, then the Central Intelligence Agency has plenty of opportunities for you! The CIA has a long history of successful collaboration with Nazis and other top war criminals. And it’s one of the hottest start-up incubators for terrorist groups; training, funding, and arming some of the most well-known terrorists and war criminals in the world. If you want an exciting career disrupting peace and prosperity around the world–and finance isn’t your thing–you can make a real impact at the CIA, literally!

Wednesday at noon, the CDC will be gracefully hosting an information session to learn about job and internship opportunities for students at the CIA. (But be careful, there may be some protesters trying to disrupt the event…)

What’s this about grievances? The post is about a specific campus event. It is highly relevant for us ambitious Stanford students when outstanding organizations like the CIA or Goldman Sachs visit our beautiful campus to offer us amazing opportunities to build our resumes while destroying/disrupting many peoples lives

Joshua, this would be a great post for a personal blog. I don’t want anyone to find this blog and think all Stanford students are as corrosively sarcastic or ideological entrenched as you. Then again, I do appreciate you advertising for this event. I think I might stop by and see what kind of jobs openings they have!

I totally understand that, and I think it’s definitely a good idea to debate whether or not joining the CIA is a morally defensible path for Stanford students. But you’ve taken a CDC event and turned it into a very one-sided tirade against the organization :/ I usually really enjoy the humor on this blog, but the exaggeration and sarcasm here (and in your reply) just comes across as bitter.

Charlie: ok I will drop the sarcasm. But could you explain how I am ideologically entrenched? All I did was link to sources documenting factual events. I didnt even change any wording; “war crimes” is a direct quote of a *Bush* official.

Card: (I can’t resist more sarcasm now) oh man you’re right, I should totally stop being bitter about the CIA killing and torturing people. I mean, so they overthrew/assassinated a few democratically elected leaders and helped destabilize regions like the DRC and Somalia, who am I to keep holding it against them? After all, they are offering valuable summer internships that would look great on some Stanford student’s resume!

Agreed with all the above comments. Joshua, you need to take this to your own personal blog; it doesn’t belong on something that’s supposed to represent Stanford, even if unofficially. Whether or not your positions are defensible and backed up by evidence is irrelevant: this isn’t a forum to air political anger on a controversial topic, especially when many of your classmates are looking forward to this event.

By the way, the CIA is an extremely large organizations and has many different niches for students. Being involved in the CIA does not mean that you are complicit in ANY of the above, unless you take an absurd view of “complicity,” in which case you want everyone to boycott the CIA, and that’s your opinion and it’s definitely controversial and not fit for this blog.

I respect your right to that opinion, but you have provided no reasoning or justification for it. Exactly why is this post inappropriate? It concerns an event on campus and does nothing but list some factual information about the firm that is trying to recruit Stanford students

@Joshua you can be bitter all you want. All I’m saying is that TUSB is not the place to push your personal agenda. Your inability to respond without reverting to sarcasm also reflects poorly on your maturity level :/

RIGHT: it is a *fact* that the CIA worked with Nazis. And I’m open to complexity and ambiguity; please, by all means, explain to me the complex/ambiguous nature of flying killer robots into sovereign nations without their consent and blowing up some of their citizens (including women, children, mourners at funerals, etc). If you have an argument in favor of overthrowing democratically elected governments, I would be happy to hear it.

Card: I will admit I went over the top with the satire by the end of the post. But I think it’s very clear that it’s satirical, and I don’t think it’s hurtful or defamatory of any individuals. I see nothing wrong with such humor.

There’s a tradition of critical theory that usually goes along with academia, involved in studying and examining structures of power, whether it’s political or cultural. Critical theory, and just learning how to be a critical thinker, is invaluable for making positive, prosocial changes to the world. The United States has some of the best universities in the world, and Stanford is in the United States. The US is also one of the most powerful and influential nations on the planet, and it’s responsible for much of the way things are. In a way, Stanford is part of that establishment which creates order, establishes law and determines how the world is going to be run. The CIA is another institution that has a great deal of influence on the safety of Americans and global citizens.

It’s only natural for Stanford students, who want to make the world a better place for themselves, to be interested in the CIA. People like Joshua need to realize that some people just can’t live on this planet together – even if they’re innocent, they can still be “bad” people. Sometimes, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet – that’s something anyone who’s studied critical theory would know. If we have to bomb a few mourners, it’s for the greater good. Overthrowing democratically elected governments is necessary if those governments won’t comply with what the US wants. The CIA is involved in a lot of things, and it used to be you only heard about the failures. Since we know about more of the successes now, I think it helps us understand the sort of world they want to create. That’s why Stanford should welcome them, and other establishment agencies with open arms – after all, we’re part of the same team, right?

Shame on both the author and TUSB for publishing this. While the author is entitled to his own political opinion, it is just that, and not representative of the Stanford student body. In my opinion, this is an egregious oversimplification of a complex ethical issue. Further, the author’s one-sided sarcasm both degrades the credibility of the post and alienates its readers. I agree with Charlie; this belongs on your personal blog.

Card again: I fail to see why sarcasm is necessarily an indicator of immaturity. Mature adults can even choose to be professional comedians and use sarcasm almost without exception. Do you think, e.g., Stephen Colbert is immature? Why not try rebutting the idea I put forth, rather than just focusing on the fact that I used sarcasm?

Pete: wayyyyy too subtle. Wayyyy over our heads.

RWP: Could you explain which part of my post (aside from the obvious satire at the end) is my opinion? Are you suggesting that a list of links to (mostly- depending in your opinion of wikipedia) credible sources about factual events constitutes a political opinion which I should be ashamed of for blogging about here?

For the last time, the post concerned an event on campus and provided a bunch of factual (and ethically extremely relevant) information. If anyone is upset because it also included sarcasm, they probably shouldn’t be reading blogs…

There are a million things you could link to about the CIA and what they do. The choice of which links you posted and the story that’s told by looking only at those links constitutes your opinion on this.

Simply saying “I linked facts! These are facts!” does not mean you didn’t bias the shit out of this article on the CIA and what they do. C’mon now, you know that.

Judging what the CIA has done is highly subjective – their mission is to gather information on behalf of and protect the interests of the United States Government, so if you think that’s a good thing, then even the examples joshua mentioned shouldn’t bother you.

In the 1950s the CIA conducted Operation Mockingbird, a coordinated effort to influence the media. They did this by interfering with the journalistic process to bolster favor for US policy, particularly in the case of Operation PBSUCCESS, which overthrew the democratically elected government of Guatemala so that Chiquita Intl. (then the United Fruit Co.) could export bananas more cheaply (I’m serious. Look it up).

In the early 1980s the CIA advised the Nicaraguan Contra and wrote them a manual which talked about how to gain support through deceit, intimidation, violence, and assassinations. The Contras could be a terrorist group by some standards, but then again, this depends on your definition of “good.” In this case, the Contras were “good” because as right-wing militants, they were ideologically they were opposed to the socialistic Sandinista National Liberation Front.

At present, one of the things the CIA is involved with is running what many refer to as “secret prisons” around the world. These facilities operate without oversight from the public to detain and interrogate individuals who have not been subject to due process under the law. The methods of interrogation used include practices which qualify as torture by many international standards. US citizens have been detained in these facilities. Now, if you believe that such actions are in the best interests of the public, and to protect the government of the United States, then this is “good.” Please see the Human Rights Watch Report “Ghost Prisoner: Two Years in Secret CIA Detention” for more information. Rendition is a serious issue which is difficult to simply label with a subjective term like “good.”

However, as with all of these scenarios, the lack of accountability and public oversight ensures that the CIA is capable of pursing policies and executing programs which have frightening implications for abuse of constitutional, civic, and human rights.

Andrew is right. Facts in and of themselves do not tell us the whole story. The rest of it is written by how we react to the facts that we are given. Ultimately any facts posted will have to be interpreted by the ethics, morals, and values of the reader. But let me drop the act to say that if you think any of what has been mentioned so far is simply “good” without some serious clarifications and creative ways to explain the ramifications to US ethics, then you’re the sort of person even the CIA would never accept. Exercise some brain matter and come up with either a disgustingly sympathetic explanation of why it’s appropriate to sacrifice liberties and rights to the interests of the political establishment, or a twisted and evil reasoning of why you want to be a part of that, before you go anywhere near a CIA recruiter.

Andrew: you are mistaking documentation with representation. My post documents a bunch of really bad things that the CIA has done and continues to do. Those are facts which are extremely relevant for any ethical person considering employment at such an organization. My post obviously makes no attempt to represent all information about the CIA, and no sane person would ever imagine that that was its purpose.

This is a blog, not an encyclopedia. I could have told our readers what year the CIA was founded in, or approximately how many people now work there, or mentioned that its headquarters is in the Milky Way galaxy. Instead, I cherry-picked only a few facts that I figured were more relevant to students thinking about applying there.

Josh, as someone who’s generally open to many of the criticisms of US policy that you put forth, I think these comments show that your style of writing is NOT winning you many allies. If your goal is really to persuade people to take your position, you should think about changing your approach. As of now, it seems like all you’re doing is entrenching peoples’ positions, one side or another.

Kyle: I am not trying to convert people. I’m just trying to inform, and I think I accomplished that. They are still free to judge whether or not they support torture, assassination, etc, and I suspect that my sarcasm will not tip the scales in favor of overthrowing democratically elected governments.

“Exactly why is this post inappropriate? It concerns an event on campus and does nothing but list some factual information about the firm that is trying to recruit Stanford students”

The entire piece supports only your beliefs regarding the CIA. You did not say *one positive thing* about the CIA. And yes, whether you’re blind to it or not, there are many positives to the CIA. You obviously aren’t even attempting to be even-handed and are just pushing your own agenda.

Honestly, you shouldn’t be a blogger on this site if you can’t even recognize the extremity of your own bias, as evidenced by your inability to understand why this post is inappropriate.

LF: do you think the recruiters will tell students about any of the numerous atrocities the CIA has committed? Of course not. You probably don’t even imagine that it should be their responsibility to do so. Why should it be my responsibility to say positive things about an organization which I believe is criminal, immoral, and one of the greatest obstacles to peace in the world?

The CIA uses violence to promote the interests of a greedy empire. Pretending to believe otherwise in order to give a half-hearted attempt at “objectivity” is a dumb game played by “journalists,” and this is not a cable news report.

Thank you very much, Josh, for your post and for your responses to those posting against you.

I came across this blog after learning that the CIA will be recruiting at Gonzaga University (a nominally Jesuit University) in Spokane, Washington in October 2012. I will not be able to attend the event to see what sort of glossy, sexy propaganda the recruiter spins on the students there because I will be returning to Nicaragua again for six weeks. Nicaragua is a country that has suffered 150 plus years of US imperialism, from US filibustero William Walker declaring himself president in the 1860s as part of his plan to create a new US slave state to the US Marines in the 1910s and 1920s fighting Sandino and his campesino army in the mountains of northern Nicaragua to the US and CIA backed Somoza family dynasty running the country for nearly half a century to the 1980s contra-revolutionary war the US organized and financed against the people and government of Nicaragua once the US dictator was overthrown in 1979 to the current hostility to any number of Latin American nations not in the US camp, including Nicaragua.

The attacks on the messenger here – Josh – appear to reflect the intellectual, political and ideological insecurities of the responders. Having worked for the US State Department, I can assure you that the CIA exists, that it does indeed engage in nefarious, bloody, illegal and immoral activities, and that it exploits not just journalist, but also diplomats (google CIA under cover of State), academics and students, among many others.

Here in Spokane, a remote outpost of white settlers in the middle of Indian country, we have our own evidence of its activities. When the history of torture in the post-9/11 era is written, Spokane will take its place alongside places like Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Guantanamo, and black sites throughout the world. Two Mormon CIA psychologist, Mitchell and Jessen, operated out of the American Legion building in downtown Spokane for a number of years and utilized their association with the SERE program at Fairchild Air Force Base here and their office associates’ connections to the JPRA program to reverse engineer survival techniques taught to US pilots and others so as to create more effect torture techniques. Mitchell personally flew to Thailand in 2002 to participate in the 83 water boardings of Abu Zubaydah. So proud was the CIA of its work on Abu Zubaydah that the CIA destroyed its tapes of his torture in 2005 in a now infamous scandal. Abu Zubaydah is one of the prisoners held without charge by the US at Guantanamo, that facility that President Obama promised to close, and which stands as proof that human rights abuses are committed in prisons in Cuba, i.e., by the United States.

Many thanks to Joshua for boldly speaking up in the face of the CIA’s willingness to come openly to onto campuses to present itself as a legitimate, mainstream, sexy alternative for students. Specifically, Joshua, thanks for making sure that the CIA visit to Stanford and other campuses comes appropriately stained with their war crimes, subversions of democracy, and the blood, vomit, fecal matter, fingernails, and other body parts and fluids that they traffic in as they sew terror, death, and anti-democratic practices across the globe.

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